during the next three weeks the two conspirators were wildly busy. money is a key which smooths many

difficulties, and the path before them was triumphantly easy.

jasper found miss mason a little hard to understand during these days. she had a way of looking at him

and then giving vent to odd little chuckles of laughter. he hoped she was not becoming childish.

she received several letters from the donkey tourists. one, received about the tenth day, told her

that another of her schemes was on the way to be started.

“we are,” wrote barnabas, “enjoying ourselves immensely. the weather is glorious, and pegasus a

model of well-behaved donkeyness. he certainly deserves wings, even though he hasn’t got them. but i

heard pippa telling him in a consoling voice the other day that when he reached heaven he’d be

provided with a pair of beautiful white ones. i fancy she sees in herself a female bellerophon soaring

aloft and through golden streets on a grey donkey. if the golden streets are anything like as

beautiful as the country lanes through which we are driving we shall be happy. i wish you could see

them—the lanes, i mean. they are a bower of fairy delight. wild roses, honeysuckle, and meadow-sweet

seem to vie with each other in filling the warm air with perfume. larks—i never knew before that the

world held so many—sing to us from heaven, the sweetest feathered choristers. last night a

nightingale sang to us in the light of a full moon. it was the first pippa had heard. there was

something almost terrifying in her rapture. she feels almost too keenly. she is, however, absolutely

in her element, and if i had ever felt any real doubt about her being the child of kostolitz i should

only have needed to see her out here to convince me. at times she finds the most adorable bits of

language in which to express her emotions. but then it is always some little thing like the colour of

a flower-chalice or the glint of the kingfisher’s blue. we saw one the other day. it skimmed up a bit

of transparent water and perched on a piece of stick in midstream. pippa and i watched it, holding our

breath. all at once something—i don’t know what—startled it. there was a streak of iridescent

colour and it had gone. but it left us both with the joyous feeling of discovery. the bird is too rare

and too beautiful to leave one entirely unmoved. pippa could talk of that [pg 206]incident. it is the

bigger aspects of nature that hold her dumb. we came to a wood one evening—pines, straight and solemn

as the aisles of a cathedral, the setting sun slanting down the long spaces. pippa’s face was a

marvel. she just put her hand up to her throat and held it there as if it ached with the beauty of the

thing, and then she made the sign of the cross. it was holy ground, though there had been no priestly

ceremonial to proclaim it so. only the wind was there to whisper a benediction, and the trees

themselves were like priests scattering the incense of their fragrant breath. the very memory of it

brings thoughts of poetry to my mind. but again to pippa. she’s yours, and i want you to know her as

i’m seeing her now, for it’s the essence of her—the spirit of kostolitz i’m seeing. a long line of

cawing rooks, whether at sunset or against the blue sky, affects her strangely. it seems to make her

unutterably sad. temporarily only, i am glad to say, for she is the gayest of children, and delights

in the smallest of pleasures—namely, a pennyworth of bull’s-eyes and sticks of pink-and-white

striped stuff which we buy from extremely minute shops, whose windows are crammed below with apples—

foreign, of course—and nuts. above the apples and nuts are rows of glass bottles full of pear-drops,

lemon-drops, peppermints, and barley-sugar, also sugar candy the real article, rough and scrunchly on

a string. and somewhere in the window, very inconspicuous, is a slit through which one can drop

letters—the sweetstuff shop is always the post office. but sweets evidently take decided precedence

over such minor considerations as letters and postage stamps. there is always a garden leading up to

the shop, and it is always crammed with flowers, the stiff old-fashioned kind—sweet-williams, stocks,

marigolds, mignonette, asters, and such-like. there are bushes, too, of lavender, and lad’s-love. i

painted one of them, but somehow did not hit it off. i’ve made another sketch, though, of a pond, a

willow, meadow-sweet, and blue hills, which pleases me quite a lot. in fact, i was so absorbed in it

that i lost pippa. you needn’t be anxious, because she is found again, and with her something you

wanted, namely, the first candidate for your school of a wonderful chance. i had just finished my

sketch, and having come back to the practicalities of life realized that pippa had been absent for two

hours. when lo! and behold she appeared, and with her a loose-limbed fellow of about twenty. when he

fills out he will rival dan in size—but that is beside the mark.

“‘barnabas,’ she cried—ceremony and with it the monsieur has lapsed into disuse in the open air—

‘do look at ze lovely little figure ’e ’as made. ‘is name is andrew mcandrew.’ and she rolled her

r’s with gusto. well, it is pleasant to think [pg 208]that pippa should be the one to find your first

candidate, and it is curious to think it is one who, if i am not much mistaken, will one day be a

great sculptor. the little figure of a young girl, made from the clay of the river, was to my mind

simply a marvel. i learnt his story. i’ll not give it in the broad scotch in which he told it, for it

would take you your whole time to make it out. he lived in london—bayswater way—with a widowed

mother, whom he supports by typing in a stuffy little office which he loathes, though he has not been

without hope that ‘aiblins the gud lorrd would find a way out for him one o’ these days.’ whenever

he has any spare time he models in clay, which mercifully is an inexpensive material. he has at the

moment a week’s holiday, during which he is tramping the country, sleeping under a hedge or at the

foot of a hayrick, eating bread and cheese like any tramp, and enjoying himself finely—as we are.

pippa, it appears, watched him at work, herself hidden, like the fairy she is, in a mass of meadow-

sweet. suddenly she appeared from among it, and they entered into a conversation which must have been

curious, conducted in a broad scotch on his side, and in broken english on hers—though her english is

progressing rapidly. anyhow, she made him understand she was out with a party of artists. he was all

agog to meet us, and she brought him along. he will join us for the next three days, instead of making

his way again in the direction of london as he had intended, and we’ve arranged between us to send

him back by train. as soon as i’m at my studio again he will look me up, and i’ll bring him along to

see you. i’ve given him no inkling of the wonderful chance before him. that is for you to do. but he

’s one of the right ones for it and no mistake. you won’t mind if we keep on the tour till the end

of june, will you? cupid is sitting gaily in the donkey-cart alongside pippa, and though aurora and

alan don’t quite realize his presence yet, they soon will discover him, and will no doubt bring him

back as a permanent guest to london. that, of course, was my main idea when i proposed the tour. high

art, thank goodness, is getting wan and pale. she had almost her death-blow the other day when aurora

made a daisy-chain with which she adorned alan, and he fell into a pond dabbling after tadpoles for

pippa. we fished him out and wrapped him in a rug, while we spread his clothes in a buttercup field to

dry. the warmth of their gold was enough to dry them, let alone the sun. i heard cupid chuckling, the

rogue! we miss you a lot, and the best thing we have to look forward to on our return is your

welcome....”

miss mason put down the letter with a little sigh of happiness. her heart felt nearly as warm and

sunny as the buttercup field.

then she set out to meet bridget at storey’s in kensington high street.

exactly three weeks after miss mason’s peregrination to chiswick she put a request to jasper.

“i want,” she said, in as careless a voice as she could assume, “to call on a friend of mine this

afternoon, and i want you to come with me.”

jasper looked dismayed. “i should be delighted,” he said mendaciously, “only calling isn’t a bit

in my line.”

“it’s quite near at hand,” said miss mason; “only at a flat in beaufort street, and i particularly

want you to meet my friend.”

“very well,” said jasper, suppressing a sigh.

“we’ll start,” said miss mason, “at half-past three.”

at the hour appointed jasper appeared.

“you had better call a taxi,” said miss mason. she felt it impossible to walk. she would have run

all the way, a proceeding which would have undoubtedly have astonished jasper.

as the taxi drew up at the door of a block of flats in beaufort street, a woman looked for a moment

from a window. as she saw the two figures get out she drew back into the room. her heart was beating

so loudly she could almost hear it.

miss mason rang the bell of the flat.

“your mistress at home?” she said to the dapper little maid who opened the door.

“yes’m. what name ’m?”

“miss mason and mr. merton,” said miss mason firmly.

they went into the bright little passage, and the maid threw open the door of the drawing-room.

“miss mason and mr. merton,” she announced.

a woman in a pale green dress came forward to meet them.

jasper stared.

“jasper,” she said, with a little shaky laugh, and she held out both her hands.

“bride!” he exclaimed, and it was nearly seven years since she had heard that name.

miss mason went quickly from the room, and closed the door softly behind her.

it was nearly an hour before they realized her absence. then bridget started up from the sofa.

“aunt olive!” she exclaimed. “oh, jasper, isn’t she a dear! i must go round and find her.”

“she’ll be back at her studio by now,” said jasper calmly.

“i’d quite forgotten her,” said bridget contritely. “oughtn’t we to go——”

“presently,” said jasper. “come back to me now. i want you. aunt olive will understand.”